SAN FRANCISCO – Farmer Scott Hunter’s almond trees are exploding into a froth of pink and white blossoms that will eventually bear more than one ton of nuts intended for trail mix, cereals, pastries and ice cream – but only if each bloom is visited by a honey bee.

That’s why concern about recent threats to the health of honey bees, whose fertile touch is behind one-third of what we eat, is spreading beyond farms and into boardrooms of companies like Haagen-Dazs and Burt’s Bees.

Berries, fruits and nuts that lend flavor to about 28 of Haagen-Dazs’s ice cream flavors depend on the insects for pollination. The company, owned by Vevey, Switzerland-based Nestle SA, uses 1 million pounds of almonds alone in their products.

But in the last year, beekeepers lost 30 percent of the approximately 2.5 million managed colonies to diseases, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture.

A recent surge in diseases and pests, from parasitic mites to Colony Collapse Disorder, which leads bees to abandon their hives, has led to the hive losses. Scientists are still struggling to understand what’s behind these problems.

Concern for the state of honey bees and its potential impact on the food industry led the premium ice-cream maker to launch a campaign intended to raise $250,000 for research into what’s ailing the honey bees, said Katty Pien, brand director of Haagen-Dazs in the United States.

“We want to avert a crisis,” Pien said.

The campaign will disseminate information on ice cream cartons, as well as in television and print ads, about honey bees’ contribution to agriculture. Money raised through the sales of honey bee-dependent flavors will be donated to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and Pennsylvania State University.

For now, Haagen-Dazs is not planning to pull back any flavors or increase prices, but will “re-examine” the issue if the population of bees continues to be impacted, Pien said.

Natural personal care products maker Burt’s Bees launched its own campaign in November, timed with the release of “Bee Movie,” starring Jerry Seinfeld. Burt’s produced a public service announcement on Colony Collapse Disorder, the phenomenon leading bees to abandon their hives, and also donated money to researchers at The Honeybee Health Improvement Project.

Growers have known for years that bees were facing increasing threats as the price of renting a beehive jumped each spring, from $40 a hive in 2000 to $140 this season.

Like most commercial fruit, nut and vegetable growers, Hunter rents bee hives every year to make sure his crops are pollinated. Price hikes have driven up his production costs considerably.

But shoppers haven’t noticed a significant price hike in foods dependent on bee pollination because the food market is global, and there are dozens of factors affecting the prices of commodities like almonds.

Still, groups such as the Almond Board of California have stepped up their efforts in the field. In 2005 the group, which represents the farmers producing 80 percent of the world’s supply of the nuts, created a Bee Task Force to facilitate cooperation with bee keepers.

They’ve also invested about $200,000 a year, for a total of about $1.4 million, in bee research.

Campaigns such as Haagen-Dazs’s may help raise awareness among consumers of the important role bees play in agriculture, which hopefully will lead to more funds for research, said Richard Waycott, Almond Board president and CEO.

“It could help people become more aware of how food is grown, and how difficult it is,” said Waycott. “There are lots of creatures and people out there doing things every day to put food on your plate.”

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